Running a vacation rental business can be a blessing if you manage it well.
It has a lot of perks and brings in good returns when the management processes are running smoothly. Without proper management processes, your spick and span rental property may not be getting any bookings.
Getting people to book your rental property may seem pretty straightforward. You upload pretty and clear pictures of your property. You researched market rates, and you set your prices just right. You even have a website with a remarkable landing page. So what could be missing?
Why are there no bookings? How can you stop different customers from booking the same rental on the same days? Why are your customer reviews poor? Why is the cash influx not improving?
Perhaps you’re channeling your energy in the wrong direction. This article will give you a rundown of the best practices for managing your vacation rental business and how Vacation Rental Software can help you level up in the industry.
Ready? Dive in.
How do you manage a vacation rental?
So you’ve kicked off your vacation rental business. You’ve sorted the costs for startup and all the maintenance that come up along the way. What next?
Apart from all the bills you have settled to get your rental property ready for continuous use, there are certain vacation rental responsibilities to keep your business running hitch-free.
One of these is dealing with your guests personally. Guest communications are a necessity in vacation rental property. Due to the pandemic social distancing restrictions, meeting with guests in person may not be necessary.
Various technology has been put in place to facilitate self-check-in and check-out. However, there is still a need for communication with them before, during, and after they have left. Your guests should rest assured that they have someone always on hand to help them settle in nicely or handle their challenges during their stay.
It just might be you answering one phone call from a guest that can give you the positive review your business needs. It’s essential that you provide an emergency contact for clients to stay in touch with, even if you don’t live in the area. A property manager can handle cases like this smoothly.
Another way to run smooth operations is to ensure your rental property is to keep your website listings updated—your online presence matters in rental property management. Keeping your website listings updated helps clients see what’s available and when it is available.
If rooms are booked during a period, your website needs to carry this information. Not only that, this information must reflect across all channels where you have listed your rentals. If there is conflicting information on your pages, you allow for confusion to set in with managing your bookings.
Of course, it can be tough to keep track of guest communications, client bookings, and channel listings without missing out on one or two essential updates. This is where vacation rental software comes in handy.
An all-in-one channel management software that can handle most of your managerial processes easily, reducing the stress of management on you and keeping your work processes running smoothly.
What is vacation rental software?
Vacation rental software is one essential software tool for rental businesses that manage the key tasks of operations and guest communications effectively. Those demanding processes you struggle with manually become automated and almost a walk in the park.
Vacation rental software is the tool most top rental property owners use to manage and market their rental property, monitor reservations, and improve bookings. With this software, clients can book reservations directly from anywhere you have listed your property.
Some vacation rental software like Lodgify allows users to build their websites fully optimized with the booking software. Not only that, you can set up the website in multiple languages and set it up to accept various forms of payments, including credit cards.
You can also manage your daily operations on this platform and sync all your listings on various channels like Airbnb, Hotels.com, and other existing listing channels. This way, you can monitor all your bookings and reservations from all the channels in one place; your vacation rental software inbox.
With all these features in place, you can curb reservation problems such as overbooking or miscommunication problems, like when you miss inquiries from prospective clients. Vacation rental software can boost your rental benefits with its many benefits.
5 Benefits of vacation rental software that can boost your rental business
Having a reliable system in place that can run with little or no supervision is one of the most important ways to stay ahead of your vacation rental competitors. See five ways your business can benefit from using a vacation rental software—
1) Time-saving
Many operational processes in the vocational rental business are repetitive and tedious. With vacation rental software, you would be looking at a whole lot of time saved because routine tasks such as price adjustments and booking correspondences become automated.
You also don’t need to access all booking sites anymore because a channel manager on the software now controls all your listings. Making adjustments and updates on all these platforms is no longer necessary because one update modifies the rest.
Again, you can now access all your messages from the comfort and convenience of one general inbox. It’s like a repository of all messages made on the different listing sites, and even better, you can attend to them on the software too.
All of these automated and synchronized operations ultimately reduce the time you use to run operations for your business. This allows you the opportunity to focus on other vital aspects of the business so that no part becomes neglected.
2) Less Human Mistakes
Managing listings and reservations manually can lead to severe human errors that can cost the business a lot of money. With automated management strategies through a vacation rental software, you leave room for only limited human mistakes.
Once you have programmed the instructions into the software, all you need to do is leave it to do its job. You can minimize human error risks by automating replies to messages, instructions for guests, syncing prices across channels, etc.
Some software also features tools that can manage some tasks to ensure there are no processes left in the wind. These task management tools automate your activities such that a specific event can trigger their action. For instance, a task can become activated once a room has been booked.
No more forgetting essential duties; your vacation rental software has got you covered—as long as you have inputted the instructions.
3) Management organization
A vacation rental software gives your business a more professional appeal.
When tasks are carried out when due, prices are in sync across all platforms, guests can communicate with you without a challenge, and the overall processes are working smoothly, your guests can rest assured that they are in safe hands.
A vacation rental software helps your team members stay organized since everyone has access to information in real-time. This helps to speed up processes because they can make faster decisions based on evidence and information available to them via the software.
4) Boost in profit
Revenue is one of the driving forces of any business. Rental business is not any different. It’s no use putting in so much effort and yielding only minimal results. With vacation rental software, you can cause an improvement in your profit. Here are a few ways how:
- With this software, you can now afford more listings on more booking channels. The channel manager on the software can sufficiently manage as many listings as you throw at it, helping you become more visible to potential customers.
- Task automation helps to ensure that guests enjoy an enhanced experience during their stay. This can improve your reviews and ratings, which can spur more customers to book your vacation rental.
- Automated pricing based on market research can lower the risks of losing revenue. It reduces prices when there is no high booking demand to help influence prospective clients’ decisions to book a reservation. This also improves profit.
5) Direct bookings for customers
Vacation rental software can improve lead generations because of the luxury of direct bookings it offers. They don’t have to visit any other site to book their reservations; they can do that right from your site with the integrated bookings technology.
With an effective Call-to-action like ‘Book Now,’ ‘Reserve a room,’ etc., you can encourage your potential clients to take action on your site. It also gives clients a more personalized experience to book directly from your site than a listings channel, which improves the guest experience.
As long as guests feel welcome on your easy-to-use website and trust your offerings, they will book a reservation.
Conclusion
Managing your vacation rental business is an arduous task without the aid of vacation rental software. This tool takes the stress of daily routine tasks that are time-wasting and tedious from you.
It is a seamless, automated powerhouse that gets the job done accurately, reducing major risks that may come from manually done processes. Are you ready to scale your business, boost your profit and extend your reach? A vacation rental software is a way to go.
